BWW Recap: The Winner Takes It All on THE GOOD WIFE

The hits keep coming for our newly elected State's Attorney, Alicia Florrick. Winning, it turns out, is not a pretty affair. First there are those "sexually-charged" emails that just won't go away. Having her dirty thoughts broadcast to the world would be more than enough to keep Alicia awake at night - but her scandal molehill turns into a mountain when it is revealed that voting machines were tampered with on Election Day.

The assumption is that the vote rig was set up in Alicia's favor, and Prady's team immediately pushes for a recount. But as we learn in Winning Ugly, truth is generally the strangest affair of all. There's a lot of truth telling in this episode in fact, and most of the admissions are painful to hear. There's Alicia admitting to Grace that she lied about her "flirtation" with Will, there's Kalinda admitting to Diane that she falsified evidence, and there's the Democratic party telling Alicia the hardest truth - the vote rig wasn't actually for her, but she'll need to take the fall for it to protect the party from further scrutiny. Grace's faith in her mother is shattered. Diane is staring down the barrel of disbarment, and Alicia is blind-sided by the harsh reality of politics in Chicago - where winning isn't always what it seems.

Alicia's run for State's Attorney has polarized people throughout Season 6. We're a divisive bunch, us viewers. There's been #TeamGardner fans against #TeamFlorrick, and #TeamLockhart Gardner versus #TeamFlorrickAgos - and this season, the debate has been about Alicia the lawyer versus Alicia the politician. Some viewers feel that taking Alicia away from the firm has fractured the link between core characters, which in turn has made the gap left by Josh Charles even more noticeable (#TeamGardner forever, by the way!). Me, I've enjoyed this foray into politics, as the storyline has put Alicia front and centre again. I've never been a fan of the case-of-the-week stuff anyway, unless the story specifically drives a character arc. But thanks to a sinister turn by the great Ron Rifkin as the wonderfully named Spencer Randolph, it looks like we're getting Alicia the lawyer back soon anyway. Famed civil rights advocate Randolph starts out the hero (complete with worship from Marissa), defending Alicia in her bid to stop a vote recount, but by the end of the episode it's Randolph that sells her out, telling the election board that Alicia was complicit in the vote tampering. "Be a good Democrat" he admonishes her after she confronts his lie. She might lose her new position as State's Attorney, but the Democrats will get to keep their majority - and that, according to Randolph, is how everybody wins.

It's a lot for Alicia to take in, and she ends the episode sobbing in Peter's arms. There's a definite softening between these two; they share a lot of common ground these days. They've both had their affairs exploited. And now they're both embattled politicians. They are the couple I imagine the Kings hoped them to be, and I'm sensing a reunion of sorts sometime soon. I will say that I don't mind so much, now that Will is gone. Were he still alive, I'd be shouting at the TV screen all over again, no doubt. Without Will, I can be more reasonable about the Florrick marriage. They really are quite the team.

Speaking of Will (I will always speak of Will!), a shout out to the writer gods for releasing even more email snippets between him and Alicia. They're kind of awkward (clearly neither Will nor Alicia are writers themselves), but I love how we get to see more of their love story played out. Like my beloved memory-pops, we've always got the best of Alicia and Will in retrospect. It almost makes up for Season 3's anemic take on their relationship. Almost. Poor Grace however, who has now been exposed to sex scandals from both parents - something no kid wants to deal with. I feel truly sorry for Grace this time around - Mackenzie Vega plays her scenes with a beautiful vulnerability here, and I sense trouble in Grace-land ahead.

Speaking of trouble - Kalinda is in it, big time. Wiley (complete with kids and angry giraffe) tells Diane about the evidence tampering, and she's rightly devastated. Diane, David Lee, Finn and Kalinda (actually they're quite the team, too) go to court and confess, but that's where the real trouble starts. Geneva Pine has been given a directive, and as usual, all roads lead back to Lemond Bishop. Charges against Diane will be dropped if she testifies against Bishop - the same offer given to Cary at the start of the season. She can't of course, just as he couldn't, and Kalinda knows this. She's going to have to fix this very big problem, and soon. We only have a few more Kalinda episodes to go, and it could go any way with our favorite investigator. Cary thinks he knows her plan, and essentially tells Geneva that he'll sacrifice himself for her - but nothing is ever that simple with Kalinda Sharma, is it? Small mercy: we don't have to wait long to find out.

What we do have, however, is a break next week before THE GOOD WIFE returns on April 26th. Three episodes to go - and if past seasons are anything to go by, we're in for the best episodes yet.

Image Credit: CBS

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